This is my yappy place. Sometimes I share my workshop experiences in jewelry-making; sometimes I talk about other things that interest me. I have created tabs along the top of my blog (next to the word home, below this msg) so you can select certain categories if you like.

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Friday, August 14, 2015

Hidden Deer, New Earrings, and a Tumbling Question

Stayed up late (for me) last night. Not really sure why, but I try not to fight the flow (as in "go with the flow").

So around 11pm I thought, "Oh, I'm up... I may as well check out the Perseid meteors even though they're supposed to be from midnight until dawn." Cassiopeia is easy to spot so at least I know where to look.

I know I'll only be a second so I don't take a flashlight... bad move. I was looking up when I hear something a few feet away from me. I look down and vaguely make out the shape of a small animal. It's sort of snorting. I can tell it's not a cat so I figure skunk or raccoon. No tell-tale odor, so probably raccoon... and they snort, and hiss, and growl.

Then a few feet beyond that I hear large feet stamping. Cripes, time to go grab a flashlight.

The large feet stamping turned out to be a deer that kept trying to get close to me every time I turned the flashlight off. The smaller black furry thing never came back so I have no idea what it was.

Maybe tonight I'll go to bed early and try to catch some of these pre-dawn meteors.

Oh, here's a pair of earrings I made from gold-fill and bronze. I really like how the photo turned out.

My Rio order came yesterday. Got my burnishing compound and will have to experiment between this and original blue Dawn. Finally started using two pounds of shot in one tumbler (Lortone 3A). Per the Lortone instructions for tumbling jewelry, I’ve got one lb of SS shot in the barrel which is like ½ inch (just upped it to two, so it's like an inch). The Sunsheen burnishing compound instructions, however, say to fill the barrel halfway (50%) with ss shot. That would be like 5 more pounds of shot at least! Lortone instructions say barrel should not weigh more than 4 pounds. There’s no way I can turn water, jewelry, the barrel itself, and 6 pounds of shot into less than 4 pounds.

I think I'll stick with two pounds of shot and water level just above shot line.

The rings, btw, are coming along beautifully. I hope to have photos soon. Anything I don't sell at the show will go into my shop at the first of the month.

Now, back to the deer for a second... me and Tennie walked down to open the gate this morning and as I'm walking back up the hill, I look over to my right and see this...

... which looks like nothing but dried brush... until you look more closely...

It (or they... I couldn't tell if it was one or two) wasn't moving a muscle, but watched us the whole way. Ready to make a quick get-away, I suppose.

At the bottom of the orchard, where we've also let things go so the deer have a place to hide, it's a bit more lush.

Last thing is watering the veggies. Tonight, I watered earlier than usual and had no cat accompaniment. What, are they on a schedule?! Anyway, I had a new visitor at the tomato hang-out. Frikkin' grasshopper was the size of a humming bird.

But I think we should end with something cuter... So that's it for me now... have a nice day!